"Dear Muslim world: I am one of your estranged sons, who
views you from without and from afar—from France, where so many of your
children live today. I look at you with the harsh eyes of a philosopher, nourished
from infancy on tasawwuf (Sufism) and Western thought. I therefore
look at you from my position of barzakh,
from an isthmus between the two seas of the East and the West.

"And what do I see? What do I see better than others, precisely
because I see you from afar, from a distance? I see you in a state of misery
and suffering that saddens me to no end, but which makes my philosopher's
judgment even harsher, because I see you in the process of birthing a monster
that presumes to call itself the Islamic State, and which some prefer to call
by a demon's name—Da'esh. But worst of all is that I see that you are losing
yourself and your dignity, and wasting your time, in your refusal to recognize
that this monster is born of you: of your irresoluteness, your contradictions, your
being torn between past and present, and your perpetual inability to find your
place in human civilization.

"What do you [Muslims] say when faced with this monster?
You shout, 'That's not me!' 'That's not Islam!' You reject [the possibility] that this
monster's crimes are committed in your name (#NotInMyName). You rebel against
the monster's hijacking of your identity, and of course you are right to do so.
It is essential that you proclaim to the world, loud and clear, that Islam
condemns barbarity. But this is absolutely not enough! For you are taking
refuge in your self-defense reflex, without realizing it, and above all without
undertaking any self-criticism. You become indignant and are satisfied with
that—but you are missing an historical opportunity to question yourself.
Instead of taking responsibility for yourself, you accuse others, [saying]:
'You Westerners, and all you enemies of Islam, stop associating us with this
monster! Terrorism is not Islam! The true Islam, the good Islam, doesn't mean
war, it means peace!'"

"Oh my dear Muslim world, I hear the cry of rebellion
rising within you, and I understand it. Yes, you are right: Like every one of
the great sacred inspirations in the world, Islam has, throughout its history,
created beauty, justice, meaning and good, and it has [been a source of]
powerful enlightenment for humans on the mysterious path of existence... Here
in the West, I fight, in all my books, [to make sure that] this wisdom of Islam
and of all religions is not forgotten or despised. But because of my distance
[from the Muslim world], I can see what you cannot... and this inspires me to
ask: Why has this monster stolen your face? Why has this despicable monster
chosen your face and not another? The truth is that behind this monster hides a
huge problem, one you do not seem ready to confront. Yet in the end you will
have to find the courage [to do so]...

"Where do the crimes of this so-called 'Islamic State' come
from? I'll tell you, my friend, and it will not make you happy, but it is my
duty as a philosopher [to tell you]. The root of this evil that today steals
your face is within yourself; the monster emerged from within you. And
other monsters, some even worse, will emerge as well, as long as you refuse to
acknowledge your sickness and to finally tackle the root of this evil!

"Even Western intellectuals have difficulty seeing this.
For the most part they have forgotten the power of religion—for good and for
evil, over life and over death—to the extent that they tell me, 'No, the
problem of the Muslim world is not Islam, not the religion, but rather politics,
history, economics, etc.' They completely forget that religion may be the core
of the reactor of human civilization, and that tomorrow the future of humanity
will depend not only on a resolution to the financial crisis, but also, and
much more essentially, on a resolution to the unprecedented spiritual crisis
that is affecting all of mankind."

"Will we be able to come together, across the world, and face
this fundamental challenge? The spiritual nature of man abhors a vacuum, and if
it finds nothing new with which to fill the vacuum, tomorrow it will fill it
with religions that are less and less adapted to the present, and which, like
Islam today, will [also] begin producing monsters.

"I see in you, oh Muslim world, great forces ready
to rise up and contribute to this global effort to find a spiritual life for
the 21st century. Despite the severity of your
sickness, you have within you a great multitude of men and women who are willing
to reform Islam, to reinvent its genius beyond its historical forms, and to be
part of the total renewal of the relationship that mankind once had with its
gods. It is to all those who dream together of a spiritual revolution, both
Muslims and non-Muslims, that I have addressed my books, and to whom I offer,
with my philosopher's words, confidence in that which their hope glimpses."

"But these Muslim men and women who look to the future are
not yet sufficiently numerous, nor is their word sufficiently powerful. All of
them, whose clarity and courage I welcome, have plainly seen that it is the
Muslim world's general state of profound sickness that explains the birth of
terrorist monsters with names like Al-Qaeda, Jabhat Al-Nusra, AQIM, and Islamic
State. They understand all too well that these are only the most visible
symptoms of an immense diseased body, whose chronic maladies include the
inability to establish sustainable democracies that recognize freedom of
conscience vis-a-vis religious dogmas as a moral and political right; chronic
difficulties in improving women's status...; the inability to sufficiently free political
power from its control by religious authority; and the inability to promote respectful,
tolerant and genuine recognition of religious pluralism and religious
minorities."

"Could all this be the fault of the West? How much precious
time will you lose, dear Muslim world, with this stupid accusation that you
yourself no longer believe, and behind which you hide so that you can continue
to lie to yourself?

"Particularly since the eighteenth century—it's past time
you acknowledged it—you have been unable to meet the challenge of the West.
You have childishly and embarrassingly sought refuge in the past, with the
obscurantist Wahhabism regression that continues to wreak havoc almost everywhere
within your borders—the Wahhabism that you spread from your holy places in
Saudi Arabia like a cancer originating from your very heart. In other ways, you
emulated the worst [aspects] of the West—with nationalism and a modernism
that caricatures modernity. I refer here especially to the technological
development, so inconsistent with the religious archaism, that makes your
fabulously wealthy Gulf 'elite' mere willing victims of the global disease—
the worship of the god Money.

"What is admirable about you today, my friend? What do you
still have that is worthy of the respect of the peoples and civilizations of
the world? Where are your wise men? Have you still wisdom to offer the world?
Where are your great men? Who is your Mandela, your Gandhi, your Aung San Suu
Kyi? Where are your great thinkers whose books should be read worldwide, as
they were when Arab or Persian mathematicians and philosophers were spoken of
from India to Spain? You are actually so weakened behind [the mask of] self-confidence
that you always display... You have no idea who you are or where you want to
go, and it makes you as unhappy as you are aggressive... You persist in not
listening to those who call on you to change by finally freeing yourself from
the dominion that you have granted to religion over all [aspects of] life.

"You chose to consider Muhammad a prophet and king. You
chose to define Islam as a moral, political, and social religion that must rule
as a tyrant in the state as well as in civilian life, in the street and in the
home, and in every man's conscience. You chose to believe that Islam means
'submission' and to impose that belief—while the Koran itself declares that
'there is no compulsion in religion'... You have made [the Koran's] cry for
freedom into the reign of coercion. How can a civilization so betray its own
sacred text? I say that, in Islamic civilization, the time has come to
institute this spiritual freedom—the most sublime and difficult of all
[freedoms]—in place of all the laws invented by generations of theologians!"

"Numerous voices that you refuse to hear are rising today
in the ummah [Islamic nation] to denounce this authoritarian religion that
cannot be questioned... Many believers have so internalized the culture of
submission to tradition and to the 'masters of religion' (imams, muftis,
sheikhs etc.) that they don't understand us when we talk to them about
spiritual freedom or personal choice vis-a-vis the 'pillars' of Islam. This is
a 'red line' for them—so sacred to them that they dare not allow their own
conscience to question it. And there are so many families in which this
confusion between spirituality and servitude is implanted from such an early
age, and in which spiritual education is so meager, that nothing concerning
religion may be discussed."

"But this [taboo] is clearly not imposed by the terrorism
of some crazy fanatics... No, this problem is infinitely deeper. But who is
willing to hear this? In the Muslim world, there is only silence regarding this
matter; in the Western media, they listen only to all those terrorism experts
who increase the general myopia day by day. Do not delude yourself, my friend,
by pretending that by eliminating Islamist terrorism we will settle all of Islam's
problems. Because what I have described here—a tyrannical, dogmatic,
literalist, formalistic, macho, conservative, and regressive religion—is too
often the mainstream Islam, the everyday Islam, which suffers and causes
suffering to too many consciences, the irrelevant Islam of the past, the Islam
that is distorted by all those who manipulate it politically, the Islam that
always ends up strangling the various Arab Springs and the voice of the young
people who are demanding something else. So when will you finally bring about
this revolution in society and conscience that will make spirituality rhyme with liberty?

"Of course, there are pockets of spiritual freedom in your
great territory: families that hand down [to their children] an Islam of
tolerance, personal choice and spiritual depth. There are places where Islam
still gives the best of itself: a culture of sharing, honor, pursuit of
knowledge, and spirituality in search of the sacred place where man and the
ultimate reality called Allah meet. In the land of Islam,
and in Muslim communities worldwide, there are strong and free consciences. But
they are condemned to exercise their freedom without the recognition of real
rights, facing the peril of community control or sometimes even of the religious
police. Never has the right to say 'I choose my Islam' or 'I have my own
relationship with Islam' been recognized by the 'official Islam' of the
dignitaries, who fight to impose [the view] that 'the doctrine of Islam is
unique' and that 'obeying the pillars of Islam is the only right path...'

"This denial of the right to freedom of religion is one of
the roots of the evil from which you suffer, oh my dear Muslim world; it is one
of those dark wombs in which, in recent years, monsters have grown, and from
whence they leap out at the frightened faces of the whole world. For this iron
religion imposes excruciating violence upon all your societies; it too closely
confines your daughters and your sons in the cage of good and evil, the lawful
(halal) and the illicit (haram), chosen by none but imposed on
all. It traps the wills, it conditions the mind, it prevents or hinders every
personal life choice. In too many of your countries, you still tie together
religion with violence—against women, against 'bad' believers, against
Christians and other minorities, against thinkers and free spirits and against
rebels—so that religion and violence ultimately
blend within the most unbalanced and vulnerable of your own sons—in the
monstrous form of jihad."

"So, I beg of you, don't pretend to be amazed that demons
such as the so-called 'Islamic State' have taken your face. Monsters and demons
steal only those faces that are already distorted by too much grimacing. And if
you want to know how to refrain from bringing forth such monsters, I will tell
you. It's simple yet difficult: You must begin by reforming the education you
give your children, in its entirety, in all your schools and all your places of
knowledge and power. You must reform them according to [the following] universal
principles—even if you are not the only one violating or disregarding [these
principles]: freedom of conscience, democracy, tolerance, civil rights for
[those of] all worldviews and beliefs, gender equality, women's emancipation
from all male guardianship, and a culture of reflection and criticism of the
religion in universities, literature, and the media. You cannot go back, and
you can do no less than this. For it is only by doing so that you will no
longer give birth to such monsters. If you do not do so, you will soon be
devastated by [these monsters'] destructive power.

"Dear Muslim world: I am but a philosopher, and as usual
some will call the philosopher a heretic. Yet I seek only to let the light
shine forth once again—indeed, the name that you have given me commands me to
do so: Abdennour, Servant of the Light. If I did not believe in you, I would
not have been so harsh in this essay. As we say in French, 'He who loves well,
punishes well'—and those who today are not tough enough with you, who want to
make you a victim, are doing you no favors. I believe in you. I believe in your
contribution to build the future of our planet, to create a world that is both
humane and spiritual!

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